. CHAPTER 2 — The Woman in Black
Ruth Hayes heard about the incident before Annie reached the workroom.
News moved strangely in Maison Devereaux. Praise traveled upward slowly, like a tired servant climbing stairs. Scandal flew on wings. By the time Annie pushed through the service door and entered the long back room lined with sewing tables, three assistants were pretending not to stare, one cutter had gone completely silent, and Ruth was standing with a spool of red thread in her hand.
Ruth was fifty-one, with silver at her temples and a softness around her eyes that did not hide how much life had taken from her. She had raised Annie in a two-room apartment above a laundromat in Queens. She could mend lace by candlelight, stretch soup for three days, and tell when Annie was lying by the way she tied her shoelaces. Her love was practical, steady, and fierce.
She saw the mark on Annie’s wrist and crossed the room at once.
“Let me see.”
“It’s nothing,” Annie said.
Ruth took her hand anyway. Her thumb moved gently over the red crescent Victoria’s fingers had left.
The assistants suddenly found reasons to leave.
Ruth waited until the door shut before she spoke. “Did Victoria do this?”
Annie hesitated.
“That woman,” Ruth whispered, and in the two words there was history Annie had never been allowed to hear.
“I touched the red dress,” Annie said quickly. “I know I wasn’t supposed to. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did it. It felt like—”
“Like what?”
Annie looked down. “Like I knew it.”
Ruth’s face changed.
Only for a second. A shadow crossed it, old and frightened, and then she pulled Annie into her arms too tightly.
“You stay away from that dress,” Ruth said.
“I will.”
“No, listen to me. Not because it’s expensive. Not because Victoria says so. Because people in this house bury things, and they punish anyone who digs.”
Annie drew back. “What does that mean?”
“It means we finish today and we don’t come back.”
“But your job—”
“I’ll find another.”
The certainty in Ruth’s voice should have comforted Annie. Instead, it terrified her. Ruth was not a woman who ran from rich people. She endured them, outworked them, outlasted them. For her to decide in one breath to leave meant the danger was not ordinary.
Before Annie could ask more, the workroom door opened.
Adrian Vale stepped inside.
He should have looked out of place among the bolts of muslin and trays of needles, but he did not. He seemed more human there than in the showroom, less like a grieving heir and more like a man entering a church he once loved. Behind him stood Victoria, her face composed, and two senior staff members who looked as if they wished they were anywhere else.
Ruth’s arms tightened around Annie.
“Mr. Vale,” Ruth said.
Adrian’s gaze moved from Ruth to Annie’s wrist and back again. “Mrs. Hayes.”
“You know my name.”
“I know everyone my wife hired.”
Victoria’s smile sharpened. “Ruth was hired long after Isabelle died.”
Adrian did not turn. “Isabelle kept notes.”
That seemed to irritate Victoria more than an accusation would have.
“I came to apologize,” Adrian said to Annie.
Annie blinked. Rich adults did not apologize to children in rooms with witnesses. At least, none had apologized to her.
“You didn’t do anything,” she said.
“I own part of this house. That means I am responsible for what happens inside it.”
Victoria gave a small laugh. “Adrian, please. You’ve barely crossed the threshold in ten years.”
“And yet,” he said quietly, “I am still responsible.”
Ruth studied him with guarded eyes. “Thank you for saying so.”
Adrian nodded, but he did not leave. His attention drifted to Annie’s face again, searching. It made her uncomfortable, though not frightened. He looked not as if he wanted something from her, but as if he had lost something in her direction and could not bear to hope.
“May I ask you something?” he said.
Ruth answered before Annie could. “No.”
Victoria’s eyebrows lifted.
Adrian accepted the refusal with a sad half-smile. “Fair enough.”
But Annie found herself speaking anyway. “What did you want to ask?”
Ruth turned. “Annie.”
“It’s okay.”
Adrian reached into his jacket and took out a small photograph, its edges worn from being carried too long. He did not hand it to Annie; he only held it where she could see.
In the photograph, a woman sat near a window with a baby on her lap. The woman had dark hair pinned messily at the back of her neck and a smile so alive it seemed impossible she could be gone. The baby was perhaps two years old, round-cheeked, laughing, one hand tangled in a scrap of red fabric.
Annie felt the room tilt.
“Do you recognize either of them?” Adrian asked.
Ruth made a sound under her breath.
Annie shook her head because she had to. Because recognizing a stranger in a photograph would be madness. Because the baby’s laugh was silent. Because the woman’s eyes were not a memory.
But her fingers had gone cold.
“No,” she whispered.
Adrian lowered the photograph. The hope in his face dimmed, and Annie hated herself for causing it.
“My daughter,” he said. “Clara. She disappeared the night my wife died.”
The workroom became so quiet the old radiator hissed like a warning.
Victoria stepped forward. “Adrian, this is not appropriate.”
“She would be fifteen now,” he continued, still looking at Annie. “Older than you, I think. But for a moment, in the showroom—”
“I’m thirteen,” Annie said.
He flinched. “Of course.”
Victoria exhaled as if relieved. “There. You see? Grief plays cruel tricks.”
Ruth’s fingers were digging into Annie’s shoulder.
Adrian put the photograph away. “I’m sorry.”
He looked truly sorry. Not embarrassed, not annoyed, but ashamed of having allowed hope to escape him in public.
Annie wanted to tell him it was all right. She wanted to ask about the woman in the photograph. She wanted to know why, when he said the name Clara, something inside her had turned its face toward the sound.
Victoria spoke first.
“The preview begins in two hours. Ruth, finish the silver gown. The child can stay in the staff hall. Away from the showroom.”
“No,” Adrian said.
Victoria stared. “No?”
“She can sit in the front row if she wants.”
The staff looked at him as if he had opened a window in winter.
Victoria’s voice dropped. “Do not do this.”
Adrian’s eyes were tired, but not weak. “Do not mistake my absence for surrender.”
For the first time since Annie had known her, Victoria Devereaux had no immediate reply.
Ruth pulled Annie close. “We’re leaving after the hemming is done.”
“You should,” Adrian said softly. “But before you go, Mrs. Hayes, I’d like to ask why your hands are shaking.”
Ruth looked down.
They were. The spool of red thread trembled between her fingers.
Victoria saw it too. Her expression hardened into something ugly.
“This is ridiculous,” she snapped. “A poor child touches a dress, and suddenly everyone sees ghosts.”
Adrian turned toward the doorway. “Sometimes ghosts are the only honest people in a house.”
He left before anyone could answer.
Victoria followed, but at the threshold she paused and looked back at Ruth.
The look lasted only a second.
It was not anger.
It was a threat.
When the door closed, Ruth sat down as if her knees had failed.
Annie knelt beside her. “Mom?”
Ruth covered her mouth.
“You always told me you found me at St. Agnes,” Annie said slowly. “You said my mother left me there because she couldn’t take care of me.”
May you like
Ruth’s eyes filled.
“I lied,” she whispered.
